Re-elected in November, councilmembers Cudaback and Hanford are serving their second terms, while Goering is on his third. Councilmember Rasmussen ran against Mike Stanger for Council Position 3 in the election, and is serving his first term on the council.

Rasmussen, who previously served on the Monroe Parks Board, has a background in financial services and banking.

Mayor Geoffrey Thomas was also sworn in by Judge Lyon. The mayor and several councilmembers had family members present to watch as they took their vows.

Thomas, a senior legislative analyst with the Snohomish County Council, has a background in environmental planning and project management. He began work on Jan. 2 and continued workingthrough the weekend.

COUNCIL DISCUSSES SAX DISMISSAL

Mayor Thomas took some criticism during council member reports over his decision on Friday to lay off Monroe’s Economic Development Coordinator, Jeff Sax. Thomas spoke with the Monitor over the weekend and explained that he will be replacing Sax’s position with a community development director who will take on a different role for the city. In addition to working towards economic development, the community development director will also focus on planning, permit processing and working on the city’s 2015 Comprehensive Plan update.

Several council members expressed concern over the fact that the decision to lay Sax off was made without any prior discussion.

Council member Hanford expressed dismay over receiving notification via email on Friday, apprising him of the mayor’s action. He clarified that he had discussed his concerns with Mayor Thomas already, but wanted to voice his thoughts in front of council, effectively establishing them as a part of public record.

“I personally was very disappointed that the mayor couldn’t have waited three more business days to talk to council, to get our advice,” said Hanford.

Hanford stated that he was frustrated over such a decision being carried out without any advance notice or explanation.

“It seems like that would be the kind of thing where you would talk to your council before you just make a move like that, on your second day in office,” said Hanford.

“I just don’t understand making such a drastic move,” he continued.

Hanford stated that he was very excited for the future, but was disappointed to start the new year off in this way.

Geoffrey Thomas is sworn in to office by judge Patricia Lyons at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, one of five elected officials sworn in that evening.Photo by Chris Hendrickson

Cudaback welcomed council member Rasmussen and Mayor Thomas, and responded to Hanford’s comments.

Cudaback pointed out that in her four years serving on the council she was aware of staffing decisions being made by the mayor in which advice or direction from council was not sought, nor was it necessary.

“I understand your frustration,” said Cudaback. “I listen to you and I hear your comments.”

Cudaback referred to the decision made by ex-Mayor Zimmerman in December; to appoint Mike Stanger to the planning commission despite the fact that the position was still listed as open on the city’s website, and would remain that way for three more days. It was pointed out during that meeting that it was the mayor’s prerogative. Cudaback pointed out that this was also the mayor’s prerogative.

“I think we should welcome the new direction and go forward,” said Cudaback.

Councilmember Hanford’s opinions were echoed by council members Kamp, Davis and Goering. Rasmusson and Gamble did not speak on the matter of Sax’s dismissal, and both stated that they were looking forward to the future. Davis, who had prepared a written response, shared his opinion with council during his turn to speak.

“When you do your job, and you do it well, that last thing you should expect is being summarily dismissed when you show up for work,” said Davis.

Davis pointed out that he didn’t feel that there was good cause for Sax’s dismissal. He shared that he feels the city is currently getting back on its feet economically, having paid off a significant portion of its debt. He credited Sax, calling his dismissal a “counter-intuitive action.”

“So this is where we are now,” said Davis. “I wish it weren’t so, but there it is.”

Goering also expressed dismay over the mayor’s decision particularly after only two days in office. He stated that he believes there may be consequences in the long run and shared his disappointment.

“I don’t think it was a forward thinking move,” said Goering.

Goering also took a moment to publicly acknowledge Sax and to thank him for his dedication to the city of Monroe. He stated that he thought Sax did an outstanding job.

“The results of the work that he did are literally in the bank,” said Goering. “We are so much better off.”

]]>http://www.monroemonitor.com/2014/01/08/new-mayor-sworn-takes-heat-sax-layoff/feed/4Thomas’ turn begins: New mayor lays off ec. development manager, plans fiscal policyhttp://www.monroemonitor.com/2014/01/07/thomas-turn-begins-new-mayor-lays-ec-development-manager-plans-fiscal-policy/
http://www.monroemonitor.com/2014/01/07/thomas-turn-begins-new-mayor-lays-ec-development-manager-plans-fiscal-policy/#commentsTue, 07 Jan 2014 18:52:45 +0000http://www.monroemonitor.com/?p=6628By Polly Keary, Editor Geoffrey Thomas is a planner by trade, so it should come as no surprise that he’s entering office as Monroe’s new mayor with planning forefront in mind. Monroe needs a plan for managing money, a plan for enforcing ordinances, a plan for what to do about legal pot, a plan for [...]

Geoffrey Thomas thinks that posting community events in the monthly utility bills such as announcements about events at Wagner Performing Arts, before which he is standing, could help support the downtown. It’s one of dozens of ideas he is bringing to the mayor’s office as he starts work this month.Photo by Polly Keary

By Polly Keary, Editor

Geoffrey Thomas is a planner by trade, so it should come as no surprise that he’s entering office as Monroe’s new mayor with planning forefront in mind.

Monroe needs a plan for managing money, a plan for enforcing ordinances, a plan for what to do about legal pot, a plan for economic growth and a plan for processing a backlog of permits.

Monroe also needs a plan for the downtown, a plan for parks, a plan for community activities, and a plan for how to advertise them.

And Thomas got many of those plans rolling last week. He entered office on Thursday. By the end of Friday he’d put in about 20 hours and kept on working through the weekend. It’s a busy start to what he anticipates will be a busy year.

Thomas began the week with back-to-back meetings with the departments throughout the city, as well as council members.

The first thing that became clear was that the city needed help with planning, he said.

“The planning department has a backlog of more than 40 pending items, from enforcement actions to short and long subdivisions, boundaries and multifamily applications,” he said. “Our current planning person is working on that, but 40 is a lot.”

So Thomas took a decisive step; he laid off economic development manager Jeff Sax Friday, and will instead look for a community development director, which Monroe has not had since Hiller West was let go in 2009.

A community development director will be able to work on economic development, but also will have planning skills, including the ability to help process permits and work on the 2015 update to the city’s Comprehensive Plan, a very involved plan detailing strategies for every element of city government for years into the future.

And Thomas doesn’t think the fight over the rezone of property at the east edge of Monroe is over. Although the sitting council approved the rezone in an emergency meeting Dec. 26, Thomas believes it is likely that the matter will wind up before the Growth Management Hearings Board, which could consume a large amount of city time.

Ultimately, Thomas hopes that the change will also make it easier and faster to get a permit in the city, whether one is adding a deck to a home or building a large apartment complex, he said.

The city needs a better plan for managing money, too, said Thomas, who is a legislative analyst at the Snohomish County Council Office, and whose job includes budget matters.

“I want to work with city staff and council to come up with fiscal planning policies so we can do a better job of forecasting future years’ budgets,” he said.

By looking at recent years, the city can establish a baseline budget, and then use revenue in excess of that for reserves or one-time projects like street overlays, he said. If revenues are consistently higher over the course of years, the baseline can be adjusted, but only cautiously.

Thomas wants to accomplish that plan in the first quarter of the year, he said.

Another pressing issue is that of recreational marijuana, he noted.

“I personally did not vote in favor of recreation marijuana,” he said. “I was worried about having a law that was inconsistent with federal law. With that said, I am concerned that if we don’t adopt regulations on the local level, we will be subjecting ourselves to state law on where to site these sorts of uses.”

There are four alternatives for the city, he noted. The city could refuse to issue permits to businesses inconsistent with both state and federal law; it could ban marijuana-related businesses altogether; it could continue to put moratoriums in place or it could go ahead and allow such businesses.

Thomas said that it’s a matter for council to decide, but he said he is aware that a majority of Monroe voters approved legalization. While he doesn’t condone marijuana use, especially for young people, he thinks the right approach might be to establish a specific zoning for such businesses in order to avoid legal conflict, much as the city did with adult entertainment, which is approved in a very small part of the Fryelands.

Currently there are two retailers applying for one liquor board license available for Monroe.

The recent grant of enough money to build Tjerne Place across town was a blessing, Thomas said, and he thinks there’s more Monroe could do to pursue such grants.

“Something else I want to do in the next four years is engage not just the community and business community, but our state legislators and senator and other elected officials and be active in sharing Monroe’s concerns with them,” he said.

Thomas also remains concerned about the downtown, which just lost the group that had managed the city’s Main Street program, a state program designed to help towns like Monroe develop their historic downtowns.

One thing the city could do is work on ways to increase the amount of housing opportunities bordering the downtown, he said, as that would increase day and evening business there. And Wagner Performing Arts Center, now under the management of the Monroe Arts Council, is an asset that could help draw people to the downtown. The city could include a happenings list in the monthly utility bill to support such events.

And the city should probably review its policies regarding the downtown to make sure they are appropriate for the current economy, as opposed to the more affluent times in which they were written, he added.

A park with artificial turf would be another good asset to draw people to town, too, he suggested.

“We are doing a parks master plan update this year too, and as part of that I’m hoping we can work with our school district to more effectively use taxpayers’ dollars by maybe having a shared park facility with synthetic turf fields, perhaps with lights, so there are places for people to recreate in the winter and early spring,” said Thomas.

And that’s just a few of the things Thomas intends to tackle in coming months.

There are railroad crossings that need attention; there are troublesome intersections at Kelsey and Main, and Blueberry and Kelsey. There’s the sign ordinance to enforce; lots more meetings to have and relationships to develop with the county and state. There’s a budget process to start in May, as well.

]]>http://www.monroemonitor.com/2014/01/07/thomas-turn-begins-new-mayor-lays-ec-development-manager-plans-fiscal-policy/feed/3State of the Chamber Pt. 2http://www.monroemonitor.com/2013/04/01/state-of-the-chamber-pt-2/
http://www.monroemonitor.com/2013/04/01/state-of-the-chamber-pt-2/#commentsMon, 01 Apr 2013 18:07:35 +0000http://www.monroemonitor.com/?p=3211 By Polly Keary, Editor Editor’s Note: Last week, the Monroe Monitor ran the first of a two-part series on the state of Monroe’s Chamber of Commerce, following a change of leadership and direction that took place nearly a year ago when the business organization was at a low point in terms of financial resources [...]

Editor’s Note: Last week, the Monroe Monitor ran the first of a two-part series on the state of Monroe’s Chamber of Commerce, following a change of leadership and direction that took place nearly a year ago when the business organization was at a low point in terms of financial resources and members. Today, membership is growing again, and the chamber is on more stable financial ground.

In the year since Annique Bennett became the director of the Monroe Chamber of Commerce, many of her efforts have been directed toward the creation of a sophisticated new website, www.choosemonroe.com, that makes it very easy for visitors to find all they might need or enjoy in the city of Monroe.

What many in Monroe don’t realize is that getting visitors to town won’t require Monroe to suddenly turn itself into Leavenworth, or develop some other theme.

Monroe already has tourism many cities would envy, she said. What Monroe hasn’t done well in the past was create connections between those events and local businesses.

So beyond the website, Bennett and the chamber are working to help local entrepreneurs profit from the large number of visitors to town each year.

“We have one of the top 20 county fairs in the whole nation; we have a top 10 NASCAR track; we have an amazing parks system with year-round events and we have a nationally-televised wakeboard competition and we are in wakeboarding magazines,” said Bennett.

Making events work for Monroe

Historically, there’s been a disconnect between the events and local business, Bennett said.

“The event producers say to us, ‘We’ve never heard from the chamber. We want to connect to businesses and have them have booths, but we didn’t know how to connect,’ and there’s never been a middle man,” she said. “That’s the role we fill as a DMO (Destination Management Organization).”

So Bennett is encouraging local businesses to have a presence at big events like Mexican rodeos, summer concerts and large fairgrounds events.

Event promoters are eager to have the participation of Monroe businesses; Candido Hernandez, promoter of Mexican rodeos that draw as many as 14,000 people to the fairgrounds on a single day, is working closely with the chamber to identify businesses that would do well to advertise there.

And the wakeboard event producers, as well as TriMonroe’s triathlon producers, have agreed to give back to the chamber 20 percent of everything the chamber drives their way in terms of marketing.

“That’s huge for us,” said Bennett.

Triple Crown

But the chamber does more than that.

Recently, Monroe was in danger of losing one of its largest summer sports events.

Each Memorial Day weekend, Triple Crown Sports holds a five-day, county-wide youth softball tournament. Many of the games are held in Monroe because of the Monroe’s large number of fields.

But that relationship was in danger of ending, said Jeff Sax, economic development manager for the city of Monroe.

“They expressed concern about Monroe for two reasons,” he said.

The primary reason was that they hadn’t been able to establish good relationships with the local hotels, he said.

The other was that Monroe only has one all-season field; the others are natural grass and get muddy sometimes.

The city is working with the school district to bring in better fields.

But Sax and Mike Farrell, the head of the parks department, reached out to Bennett to see what the chamber could do to help.

“I just thought it was a perfect opportunity to showcase what the chamber is doing as DMO to connect the business community and hotels, and down the road the restaurant community, and anyone who wants to connect,” he said.

Bennett learned that the manager of Triple Crown had been unable to reach a deal with former hotel managers, but there were new managers in place who were eager to talk. Eventually, Triple Crown worked out a deal with Guesthouse Inns and Best Western to serve as the designated hotels for the annual event.

“Annique was a huge help in reaching out to the hotels,” said Wayne Parker, baseball event coordinator of the Colorado-based Triple Crown. “We now have two hotel partners to host our teams in Monroe. This allows Triple Crown to put certain age groups in the city of Monroe for the entire weekend of the event, which makes things much easier for all.”

“It really fixed the problem,” said Sax. “Once we were working together, it was easy.”

There’s more to marketing a town than reaching the people who will shop there, though. Having relationships with other entities in the tourism business is vital, said Bennett.

Establishing a network

Hotels in the town of Bothell are quite often more full during the week than the weekend, due to a high number of business travelers and a low number of events.

That means that when Monroe’s hotels are maxed, Monroe event coordinators can pass visitors on to Bothell. That gives Bothell’s Chamber of Commerce an incentive to market Monroe’s events.

Bennett is looking for more arrangements like that.

Monroe’s Chamber of Commerce is now sitting down once a month in meetings with other members of the Snohomish County Lodging Association and with other tourism entities such as Everett’s Museum of Flight.

“We sit in a room and figure out how to cross-pollinate,” said Bennett. “We didn’t know it, but we’re a darling in Snohomish County. We have sports fields, we have everything.”

There is a lot of new blood in Monroe right now, people who are excited about marketing and hip on the new ways marketing is done, said Bennett.

Doug and Traci Hobbs are managing the racetrack and promoting events at the fairgrounds. Hal Gausman is new as director of the Evergreen State Fair. There are new members and a new board of DREAM, the downtown revitalization organization. The city has a new economic development manager in the person of Jeff Sax. That role was created just over a year ago, and Bennett called the creation of the role “forward-thinking,” saying that it sets Monroe apart from many cities that haven’t similarly invested.

On the future, Bennett hopes to start coordinating businesses to achieve “cluster-based” marketing, which is promoting businesses as a group.

There are a large number of alternative healthcare providers practicing locally; they could be marketed as a group. There are many nurseries, and many outdoor recreation businesses that could benefit, as well.

Sales taxes could help city revitalize

All of it benefits the city, and could help the city in time become its own draw, with a revitalized downtown core that people would travel to visit, or perhaps destination amenities such as improved parks.

And the more the city can invest in the livability of the town, the more attractive the town becomes as a place for large businesses to locate, she added.

“We drive the revenue into the city pot so the city has the money to invest in the heart of the town,” she said.

It’s a significant departure from what the chamber has done in the past, and there have been detractors who questioned the closure of the visitor center, something Bennett said she hopes is only temporary.

But membership in the chamber has grown more than 37 percent in the last year, now numbering 220 members

And as membership grows, so does the confidence of those members, said chamber member Lance Eblin.

“As times change, strategies change, and I think what the chamber is doing is spot-on,” he said.